Origin

This character combines the grass radical at the top, which signals that the character relates to plants, with a sound hint component below that roughly indicates the pronunciation. The grass radical by itself would refer to plants in general, but pairing it with the sound component narrows the meaning down to a specific plant part: the stalk or stem that supports the leaves and flowers. The bottom component doesn't contribute to the meaning but rather tells you how to pronounce the character, following the common Chinese principle of combining a meaning indicator with a pronunciation guide.